Abstract
Little children, keep yourselves from idols. This sentence (1 John 5:21) has perplexed its commentators,' who have found it an unsuitable peroration to the Epistle both in content and in form. The First Epistle of John treats Christian service, not as a series of observances, but as an infinitely extended act of love; touching doctrine, its cardinal tenet is not that God is one, but that the One God sent his son to die as man. It would seem that John could not have been so platitudinous, or his audience so recalcitrant, as to require this banal prohibition, and it has therefore been interpreted to mean more (or less) than it says. Particular satisfaction may arise when the interpreter has turned John into a sermon for his own times: 2
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